So you might be wondering, how do customer reviews impact SEO for Shopify sites in 2024? If you’re like most business owners, you’ve made the connection that reviews and search engine optimization (SEO) are closely intertwined
Customers rely on reviews more than ever before in today’s online world. So if you don’t have positive reviews, you’ll struggle to gain trust and acquire new customers to your site.
This is especially true if you don’t have a review management strategy to keep in touch with your target audience. What is a review management strategy? This strategy includes thinking about the process of responding to and generating reviews across multiple pages. The strategy is mainly used to support the business’s marketing strategy and improve overall business performance.
If you’re ready to take your private label cosmetics business to the next level, try to improve SEO on your Shopify store.
Relationship between customer reviews and SEO for Shopify sites?
Most people go to Google, type in what they’re looking for, and check the first page of results for star ratings. Before they input their credit card information, they compare the shops and products with the highest star ratings.
Between a 2-star business instead of a 5-star business, the more positive reviews you have, the more clicks you’ll get. As a result, customers and Google are more likely to trust businesses with greater star ratings.
Customers are interested in how businesses respond to and manage reviews, so simply collecting them isn’t enough. You should be active on not just review sites, but reviews on your own site as well with recent input, consistent customer involvement, and consistent resolution of unfavorable reviews.
When you consider how positive reviews might help your business rank better in search engines, you’ll realize how important they are. Several other factors like quality content, site speed and performance, can influence your search rankings.
Higher positions on Search Engine Result Pages
Higher positions in search engine result pages (SERPs) are always preferable because most visitors never click past the first page, and some don’t even scroll past the first few results! Getting higher positions on SERPs is where you’ll want to focus on to increase SEO for Shopify sites.
Positive online customer reviews have a significant impact on your search engine position. When search engines like Google notice that your business has favorable and recent reviews, it indicates that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.
You’ll be able to track your business’s progress and see how it affects your performance once you implement a review management plan. You can use a tool like ShopperTrak for tracking your brand’s progress.
Your SEO ranking will begin to rise after you have a higher rating and are obtaining more customer clicks. This means you’ll get more traffic and have a better chance of converting your target market into paying customers. An SEO Rank Tracker tool such as Zutrix can help you know the performance of your website.
How Important is Customer Feedback and Does it Affect SEO for Shopify Sites?
Both positive and bad reviews influence SEO for Shopify Sites after all, “no publicity is bad publicity”. At the very least, they both operate to inform Google that you are a respectable company. Authenticity is important to Google, and there’s a new set of metrics in Google’s algorithm that looks for authenticity from customer reviews. They can help or hurt your SEO strategy in various ways.
Positive reviews
- Positive reviews increase click-through rate – It’s a straightforward equation. More stars equal more clicks and vice versa. This means that if you get more clicks, visitors see the best reviews, it will tempt them to leave a review.
- High ratings can assist you in ranking higher for specific keywords: If you’re a wise business owner, you should use reviews to improve your service. Reviews act as user-generated content for your brand, which is SEO gold!
High-quality, authentic, and original content is essential for a long-term SEO strategy. When a consumer leaves a review, they are providing Google with exactly what it is looking for: new, true, authentic content about your company. Because it is directly related to your business, it will almost always contain terms that are pertinent to your organization. As a result, Google highly ranks in this material.
Negative reviews
- Negative feedback provides an opportunity to improve: Not to worry if you receive some negative reviews! Just know that negative reviews provide you useful feedback to continue improving. They can assist you in better understanding your target audience, what they want, what they’re looking for, and how you could do better. This is invaluable for your business to learn from and make changes if the issue is significant enough.
- Negative feedback provides an opportunity to reply: Most importantly, both negative and positive reviews, allow you to respond and actively control your online presence. They also give you a direct line of communication with your customers showing you actually do care about what they think about your company.
Ways to improve your SEO with reviews
There were several ways to ask for feedback, however, you may be daunted by the prospect of having to send messages to thousands of customers manually.
Fortunately, online review platforms like Reviewbit will automate this process for you. A WhatsApp review request is a unique option as it is cost-effective and requires less effort. You can also tailor your review request templates to match your company’s branding or review collection strategy. Here are some pointers to keep in mind when collecting reviews with a review app
1. Install a review app on your Shopify store
Customers will be more likely to post reviews if you make it simple for them to do so, which means don’t feel any type of complexities. If your clients make purchases or schedule appointments online, giving them a convenient way to leave a review boosts your chances.
The following are some of the most popular review collection apps:
You can do the same thing with the WhatsApp review collection tool, allowing your consumers to provide feedback without ever leaving their chat window. This reduces the chances of them forgetting to write the review later.
2. Ask your customers for a review
A surprising number of customers will volunteer to lead a review for your product or service when asked.
The methods listed below are just a few of the many options for gathering feedback:
- First, send a simple request to your previous customer list using WhatsApp
- Set up messages at the point of sale to ask for reviews from both new and loyal consumers
- A couple days after the parcel’s been delivered, send a review request
Thank your customers for their loyalty and emphasize the importance of positive reviews to your business. This genuine engagement increases brand loyalty and has the potential to produce extraordinary results.
Try implementing a feedback loop to ask your customers for a review, then analyze the data to initiate next steps to further improve your product or business.
3. Provide incentives for customer reviews:
Consider incentivizing your customers if you ask for reviews and they don’t respond. A modest discount on a future order can go a long way towards encouraging someone to review your business, products, or services.
Customers enjoy being acknowledged and valued. What better way to demonstrate this than by offering a discount on a future order? Discounts can also have a snowball effect. The buyer purchases your product, leaves a review, receives a discount, purchases another product with their coupon, and provides additional feedback.
Wrapping up
Remember to include online reviews in your SEO strategy and try out some of the best SEO tools because they can help you get a higher Google search ranking and generate more website traffic. Because consumers are sometimes hesitant to submit product feedback, you should encourage them to do so by sending emails and reminders.
Good luck and we hope these tips work for you and your business!
Guest blog contribution, written by Safeeda of ReviewBit
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